AI/ML Research Engineer

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We're a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies - collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation's health, security, and prosperity. Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose - and help shape the future.

The MITRE Corporation's N973 National Security Department is part of MITRE's Intelligence Center and supports national security sponsors through integrated technical research, systems engineering, cyber capabilities, and intelligence mission expertise. The department works across MITRE centers, divisions, projects, and sponsor stakeholders to align mission priorities with practical technical solutions, bringing together capabilities from across MITRE where appropriate. N973 partners with government sponsors to shape, evaluate, and transition impactful work that addresses complex national security challenges and helps ensure a safer, more secure nation.

Roles & Responsibilities:

As a Lead AI/ML Research Engineer, you will provide technical leadership in applied AI/ML research, model evaluation, and engineering to solve complex national security challenges. You will collaborate closely with government sponsors, mission partners, and multidisciplinary MITRE teams to design rigorous experiments, assess emerging AI capabilities and risks, and transition promising methods into reusable tools and operational workflows. Initial work may include foundation-model security and provenance challenges, while the role will remain broad across advanced model evaluation, AI assurance, and adversarial AI.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead applied research and engineering involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, foundation models, data engineering, and modern software practices to address complex mission challenges.
• Design and execute controlled experiments to train, fine-tune, adapt, and evaluate models, including benchmark development, behavioral analysis, and quantitative model comparison.
• Develop reproducible research pipelines, evaluation harnesses, and prototypes using Python, modern ML frameworks, and GPU, cloud, or high-performance computing resources as appropriate.
• Assess model performance, robustness, security, provenance, and operational suitability, including uncertainty, false-positive and false-negative tradeoffs, and alternative explanations.
• Investigate and validate methods for AI security and assurance, which may include adversarial testing, model fingerprinting, model extraction or distillation analysis, and related emerging threats.
• Transition promising methods into reusable software tools, repeatable workflows, technical documentation, and implementation recommendations.
• Collaborate with government sponsors, mission partners, and multidisciplinary technical teams; communicate findings, limitations, and recommendations to technical and executive audiences.

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 8years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 5years' experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience developing, training, fine-tuning, adapting, or rigorously evaluating machine learning or foundation-model systems.
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with at least one modern ML framework; ability to develop reproducible research software, evaluation pipelines, or ML tooling.
• Experience designing controlled experiments, benchmarks, or test plans and interpreting quantitative model-performance data.
• Experience translating ambiguous mission or sponsor needs into executable technical approaches, research plans, prototypes, or recommendations.
• Experience evaluating technical alternatives and balancing mission impact, implementation risk, technical feasibility, data constraints, and operational considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical work and collaborate across multidisciplinary teams, government sponsors, mission partners, and senior leadership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex AI concepts, findings, limitations, and uncertainty to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Must have an active Top Secret/SCI w/Poly U.S Government issued Security Clearance.
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with foundation-model evaluation, large-scale model inference or training, distributed computing, GPU clusters, or open-weight large language models.
• Experience with knowledge distillation, model compression, model extraction, model provenance, behavioral fingerprinting, or related research.
• Knowledge of adversarial machine learning, foundation-model security, AI red teaming, model assurance, or AI test, evaluation, verification, and validation.
• Familiarity with statistical hypothesis testing, similarity metrics, confidence calibration, false-positive and false-negative analysis, or forensic methods.
• Experience with watermarking, memorization analysis, training-data attribution, stylometry, black-box model evaluation, or model-behavior analysis.
• Experience transitioning experimental methods into operational tools, repeatable workflows, technical demonstrations, or mission-relevant capabilities.
• Experience supporting Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, or other national security organizations.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary research or engineering efforts, mentoring technical staff, and influencing technical direction across complex sponsor engagements.

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):
Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):
Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

Salary compensation range and midpoint:
$191,200 - $239,000 - $286,800 Annual

Work Location Type:
Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

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